Smot this with your
glazzies: Spam, grapes, peas and onions. My mailbox was lit. and fig.
spammed with this monstrosity. Bonus points for the immediate
preparation time; (Like the poser asked of Ned Flanders by Homer:
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that He Himself could not
eat it?) only Yahweh can
make it faster. And make it taste delicious, presumably:
"
VINEYARD SPAM SALAD
Recipe By :
Serving Size : 6
Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Salads
Amount Measure
Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------
--------------------------------
1 cn SPAM Luncheon Meat,
cubed
-(12 oz)
2/3 c Mayonnaise or salad dressing
1 tb Lime
juice
1 t Dry mustard
2 c Seedless grapes
1 c Peapods, cut
in half
1/2 c Thinly sliced red onion
In skillet, saute
SPAM over high heat 2 minutes,
stirring constantly; set aside. In
small bowl, combine
mayonnaise, lime juice, and dry mustard. In
large
bowl, combine grapes, SPAM, peapods, and onion. Tos
(sic)
with
mayonnaise mixture. Cover and chill 1 hour."
I've always wanted to
insert (sic) into somebody else's text. It strikes me as unutterably
smug.
Typing “vineyard spam
salad” into Google returns 7,540,000 results, which aptly
illustrates how nefarious Search Engine Optimisation and content
appropriation is. Other than a smattering of why have I been sent
this recipe? – type peevishness, all the other links appear to
return the recipe verbatim, which serves no purpose other than
clogging up the arteries of the internet with spam.
I have also decided to
strike from my bookmarks any recipe aggregator site that actually
lists this recipe. I'm quite sure none of them have actually kitchen
tested this bad boy, and are essentially untrustworthy whores.
I set out to make this
salad, but unfortunately we live in an erstwhile food desert. Long
Island City attracts yuppies, and yuppies don't eat spam. Even when
they're camping in the Ozarks. The local victual repository, The Food
Cellar, prides itself in only selling organic and quality noshage.
Which is why oranges cost a dollar each. In addition to being
deprived of spam, I'm flirting with scurvy.
Before I moved to NY, I
imagined that the average Manhattanite survives on a diet of coffee,
macrobiotic salads, foraged microherbs, ortolan eggs, Korean/Kabbalah
fusion truck food and so forth. I'm not entirely disabused of this
notion. Luckily, I'm a stroll away from both Green Point and Astoria,
home respectively to Polish and Greek communities, and handsomely
furnished with greengrocers and cheap supermarkets. I secured a tin
of low sodium Spam with ease.
I may look like a
yuppie, but I don't eat like one. I like spam, luncheonmeat, bully
beef, Shippams potted beef, mechanically reclaimed snoutwurst, the
late night doner kebab. All are grist to my maw. The more dubious the provenance, the more
likely I am to enjoy it. Why does this recipe curl my lip, then? Is
it the egregious quantity of mayonnaise, the dubious use of the word
Vineyard due to the inclusion of grapes, or the sneaky way
Hormel, the makers of spam, market the product?
I can begrudgingly
attest that Vineyard Spam Salad is moderately tasty. I deviated from
the recipe in 3 ways: I used low sodium Spam, I cut the mayonnaise
with a good dollop of crème fraiche, and I neglected to chill for
the instructed hour. Mrs FAI, who loathes mayonnaise as a dressing
(she only ever eats it with frites), pronounced it “okay”, and
my mother-in-law adjudged it “delicious”. The saltiness of the
spam complemented the sweetness of the grapes and the raw snow peas
provided a welcome crunch. The sauce was tangy but there was too much
of it. You can halve the mayonnaise with confidence.